The Argument.

The presidents of Israel and France are arguing about the creation of the modern state of Israel.  Macron believes that the United Nations created it and Netanyahu insists that it was created through the efforts of the Jewish people.  I suggest that both are correct and that it is a significant part of the reason that the Middle East is in such a mess today.  I am not a scholar steeped in the intricacies of Arab/Jewish history, but I have thought about it for.a long time.  It is a difficult subject for me, because I honestly believe that the creation of the modern state of Israel was designed to make up for European and American tardiness in addressing Nazi Germany’s purge of Jews in Europe, and rather than redressing historic wrongs, reinvigorated the conflict that has embroiled the region since.  I am not here saying that it was a mistake, only that it gave Arabs a modern, very visceral, rationale for the renewal of the age-old conflict between Arab and Jew.  Jews removed Arabs from land that they had occupied for a very long time, arguing that it was their historic homeland.  Arabs responded with a campaign to destroy the modern state of Israel.

When required to take sides, I take the Jewish side, in part because my cultural heritage is closer to Judaism than it is Islam.  I actually believe that Christianity grew out of Judaism and the culture that emerged in this country over the centuries makes our entire way of life closer to Judaism than to Islam.  The issue is further complicated by a profound split in the modern Arab world, with Shia Arabs pursuing the argument with Israel even more vigorously than their Sunni brethren.  And on top of all of that, we now have the issue being warped into the struggle for world leadership between Washington, Moscow and Beijing.  Were I able to do so, I would resolve the issue by guaranteeing the continued existence of Israel and dramatically improving the quality of life for all residents of the region to include the plethora of religious and ethnic splinter groups that exist throughout the region.  A task complicated by too many people living in too small a space.  We are not able to do that, so we are involved in what could very easily develop into a nuclear exchange that will benefit no one.

The Arab-Jew argument has been going on long enough that both sides are able to firmly believe that they are in the right and the other is the malefactor that must be crushed.  I characterize the problem as being too many grandfathers having killed too many grandfathers.  I don’t believe that there is anything that can be done that will eliminate the profound historic disagreements that exist between Arab and Jew.  Conflict is close to inevitable and must be dealt with realistically.  In my assessment of the situation, one of the principal threats to the United States is found in the current Iranian leadership.  Developing a strategy that deals with that leadership is the critical challenge facing us today and I do not believe that the current Administration is dealing with it effectively.  I also believe that the issue is time sensitive.  If we procrastinate long enough, apocalyptic leadership  in Teheran will possess nuclear weapons and that will almost certainly guarantee their use, because Israel will act if we do not.  We may well already be at that point in time and it makes not one iota of difference who is right and who wrong about the origins of the Israeli state.  American cities are at risk.  Teheran explicitly tells us on a daily basis that Israel is the Little Satin and America is the Big Satin.  I believe them and reject the wishful thinking that undergirds the Obama/Biden/Harris approach to the issue.  Were I in a position to do so, I would explain to Teheran that if they continue with their attack on Israel, they risk being blown off the face of the earth.  Not because they are right or wrong about Palestine, but because they pose a threat to our continued existence.

The "Deep State."

 There is much talk about the “deep state” in the run up to our presidential election.  I suppose that there are several different definitions of the’DEEP STATE’ depending on who is talking about it, but I see the most common definition as being our bureaucracy.  I was part of that bureaucracy for three decades, three decades ago, and I have some very definite opinions about it as seen from inside and outside of it.  None of my opinions will please anybody, including myself, but that is true of a lot of other facts of life as well.

Before I go any further, I should note that I firmly believe that our society needs a strong, able bureaucracy.  Life is far too complicated, our population is far too large and spread over far too much territory, to not have a strong bureaucracy.  Having said that, I also believe that we have overdone it in spades.   Our unelected, bloated bureaucracy has involved itself too deeply in our daily lives and plays too large a role in deciding how we live our lives.  Were I able to wave a magic wand and reorder our world, I would increase the role of individual responsibility, and reduce the role of government.  Unfortunately, I am not able to do either, nor am I able to set in motion societal forces that might accomplish that objective.

We are stuck with an enormous bureaucracy and nobody is going to destroy it, much as some of us, including former President Trump might desire.  The reason is to be found inside the American people.  We are no longer the hardscrabble populace that came out of the Great Depression.  Today, we are a naive people that are trying their utmost to create the perfect state.  One in which all people live harmoniously with one another, believing in the same principals, and submissive to the greater good.  We need a strong bureaucracy to ensure that we all follow the rules.   Our problem is that we do not all share the same definition of utopia.

My own experience in government has reinforced my thinking on this subject.  I was never a member of any clique, or follower of any important personality.  My colleagues could not understand my comparatively rapid rise in rank.  I was almost always the youngest officer in any rank that I held, and I was usually promoted at the first opportunity.   I had no political benefactors, I was not wealthy, I was not particularly intelligent, and I did not enthrall my colleagues with brilliant analysis.  I actually displeased several important personalities in the career service and was known to be an independent, if unintelligent, thinker.  I just progressed in rank rapidly, no matter which political party was in control of government at the time.  I never received plum assignments and was always shunted off to impossible situations like war and natural disaster.  On reflection, I now understand that I was useful because I was not associated with any particular group and was always available for any nasty job that nobody else wanted.  I was promoted not because I was right about anything.  I was promoted because I was useful to the group in power at the time.

I inevitably spent a lot of my career in troubled situations and came to agree with critics of the Foreign Service in a lot of different situations.  I too frequently saw my colleagues through the eyes of a CIA operative, or a battalion commander, or a squadron commander, and found the words of my Foreign Service colleagues, far too often, to be empty pontifications rather than brilliant analysis of the situation on the ground.  The people with whom I was working in Viet Nam, or Turkey, or Stuttgart saw me as part of a rival organization and my position forced me to think about problems differently than my colleagues sitting in an air-conditioned office on the fifth floor of a nice, air-conditioned office building in Washington DC. 

Were I to be able to wave a magic wand and remove the problem, I would require any government official that might have influence over foreign policy to have had actual experience with the nasty side of war.  Were I knowledgable enough about the issues involved in other  areas of government, I would impose parallel requirements.  Too often, the bureaucrat making the decision is too ignorant of the real world that he or she is attempting to regulate.  These people are not the enemy, they are just not smart enough for the task that they are attempting to perform.  Our effort should not be to destroy the Deep State.  It should be to dramatically improve our bureaucracy.  I should also note that I would significantly reduce it in size as well.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence continues to capture my thinking. I see it as a relatively easily understood example of the power of the computer in the hands of the populace at large. I have absolutely no clue as to how it is going to play out, but I sense that it is going to coninue to speed up the "information" revolution that is already taking place throughout the world. Here is the original photograph and the two sibling images that I created using AI recently. These images could have been created by a skilled practitioner of Photoshop without AI, but the idea that they can be created by anyone in a matter of minutes is a profound "advance" in image creation. Add in voice manipulation and the "advances" bring made in video technology, coupled with the forces that are limiting our ability to travel widely, along with the political polarization of our major media sources, and you have a recipe for even more mass stupidity than exists presently.

A leader is no better than the people that he or she leads.

 My thesis is that the speed with which the world is changing is greater than humans are capable of managing.  Our reaction to change is to welcome it when it benefits us individually, resist it when it does not, and try to ignore it when it forces itself upon us.  Wherever possible, we build artificial realities in which to hide and, all too often, raise false leaders to guide us.  We can not fathom the enormity of the problem that we face with too many mouths hungering after limited resources, so we quibble about the price of gasoline, the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door, and our precious feelings.  We are too busy with our own individual lives to worry about anybody that lives outside of our non-existent borders.  Were we to honestly assess the status of humans living in far too much of the world, including our own ghettos, we would better understand the reason for the severe deterioration of the world order, as well as the increased antipathy directed at us from abroad.

Because of our still powerful economy, and our massive nuclear capability, we remain the strongest nation on earth, in spite of the increasingly wimpish nature of our populace, but very unfortunately, we have some very powerful antagonists that are growing closer to one another due to the antipathy they feel for us.  While we remain the most lethal power on earth, the nature of conflict has changed sufficiently that no one is going to win the next major conflict.  Today, you and I, out here in the hustings, are arguing among ourselves whether we should elect a little girl that we pretend makes us joyful, or an elderly megalomaniac that wants to restore us to king of the hill.  I choose the megalomaniac because his failings are less likely to cause as immediate a problem as are the failings of the little girl, but  I do not see either one as adequately addressing the root cause of our problem - the changed nature of our society.  

We are no longer the country that we were when our parents were alive.  The “Greatest Generation” was born in the depression, tempered in nasty person-to-person conflict literally all over the globe, and dedicated to making the world a better place in which to live.  My generation tried to live up to their expectations and failed miserably, even as we had some tactical successes along the way.  The generation that we are raising is the product of those failures.  We honestly believe that we can improve our own security by surgically eliminating individual bad guys with “over the horizon” technology while pretending to improve the lives of the masses with artificial intelligence and virtual whatever.

I think a lot about leadership.  I have led people, sometimes in life and death situations.  I fully understand that a leader is no better than the people that he or she leads.  I repeat, a leader is no better than the people he or she leads.  There is no question in my mind, but that we have an extremely serious leadership problem, but the more serious problem, by far, is the changed nature of our society.  We are, today, a bunch of small, petty, selfish, confused wimps and the world is waking up to that fact.  The next serious argument that we have with one or another of our nuclear antagonists is going to fundamentally change the way in which humans live - no matter who claims to have “won.”

The filibuster and our future.

 I do not believe that the elimination of the filibuster will destroy America, but I do believe that it will be the final act in the destruction of the republic.  It will immediately transform America in very profound ways depending on which group wins any given election, and our congress will be transformed into a parliament wherein the majority of the moment is king.  I look at the history of parliamentary government and much prefer what we have enjoyed these past several hundred years.  I don’t hold those of us that want to go this route to be bad people.  They are just very shortsighted.  Unfortunately, the difference is not sufficient to save us from a significant increase in the swing of the political pendulum and that will intensify our divisions rather than heal them.  Division is what will destroy us.  The exact path that we take will depend on tactical issues of the moment, but the lack of unity is what will ensure our destruction.  I continue to see us as being stupid people.   Well educated, wealthy, cowards, afraid to face up to the specific issues that threaten us and adept at creating imaginary worlds.  I am not a fan of The Donald, but the idea that we are seriously considering the election of Harris/Walsh is literally embarrassing.  I am sure glad that I don’t have to explain America to any of my foreign friends any more.

Artificial Intelligence.

 I have recently been exploring artificial intelligence and I find much of it to be unnerving.  Obviously, some of my neighbors do as well.  One, who is an unfailingly severe critic of my thinking, actually found my explorations to be so disturbing that she requested me to stop writing about the subject, preferring that I go back to complaining about our collective stupidity instead.  I suggest that this approach to the problem of AI is indicative of our approach to all of our most serious challenges and is the reason that we are struggling with a cascading flow of increasingly problematic failures at home and abroad.  When we run up against a challenge, we immediately seek a way to avoid it rather than deal with it effectively.

Anything else is ignorant, wishful thinking.

 Israel appears to be concentrating its current activities in Lebanon on destroying Hezbollah supplies and removing Hezbollah leadership from the battlefield.  The principal tools being used are superb intelligence coupled with equally superb air power, supplemented with limited ground operations designed to further weaken Hezbollah capabilities.  This differs, at least for now, from its campaign in Gaza, where it has been actively attempting to destroy Hamas rank and file, as well as its leadership.  It remains to be seen how much of its current ground campaign in Lebanon is preparation for a broader attack and what the objectives of that campaign might be.

The question immediately before us, presently, is how Israel will respond to the most recent Iranian provocations - ineffective though they have been.  Some American observers believe that Israel is intent on waging its campaign against Iran with the objective of freeing the Iranian people from their radical leadership.  I hope that is so.  If it is, I agree with the analysts that expect Israel to avoid the oil fields because that would adversely impact the lives of the Iranian people.  Were I influential in their decision-making, I would be arguing for a massive strike on their nuclear facilities, even though the Biden Administration appears to be vigorously and mindlessly arguing against that approach.  My rationale being that a conflict with Iran after they have a nuclear capability is going to be far more painful than it would be now.  Unlike Biden, I believe the Iranian leadership when it daily tells us that they intend to destroy both Israel and America.

I argue that it is time to understand that the current leadership in Iran is dedicated to destroying America.  I do not believe that the Iranian people share that objective.  I do not want to go to war anywhere with anyone,  War is a stupid activity, but if we become involved in war, I firmly believe that we have no choice but to see it though to victory.  Appeasement is never an acceptable strategy.  No matter how we might want to deny it, we are currently ineffectively engaged in numerous wars, to include one with the radical leadership in Teheran.  We must face up to it now, if we are to minimize the costs in blood and treasure that we will inevitably incur.  Anything else is ignorant, wishful thinking.

Nuclear weapons changed the rules.

 Teheran has responded to Israel’s recent killing of the leader of Hezbollah and one of Iran’s senior military officers with another largely ineffective missile attack on Israel.  Simultaneously, Israel appears to have initiated its ground offensive into Lebanon.  The United States helped Israel repel the Iranian missiles and continues to argue for a ceasefire.  Everybody in the entire world is looking over their shoulder at our forthcoming election.  The expectation on all sides being that the election of Harris means continuation of the ineffective Biden policy of appeasement, while the election of Trump would mean a return to a hard-nosed American effort to thwart Teheran’s malevolence.  I agree with this appraisal and fully support an immediate effort to stop the radical Shite attempt to dominate the Middle East, for all kinds of reasons, and I argue that we have to do even more - much more - if we are to secure our future.

There are enough reasons to stop Teheran, if we think only about the Middle East, but, as I have pointed out in previous articles, there are broader ramifications that spill out into the wider challenges facing us.  Teheran is allied with both Moscow and Beijing and the radical Shite mullah’s success or failure in the Middle East will significantly impact our relationship with these two major antagonists in Europe and Asia.  We may well be the richest country that has ever existed, but our wealth is finite and we have an infinite number of things that need our attention.  We are in the mess that we are in right now in very large part because you and I refuse to think about anything outside of our immediate existence.  We replace thought with wishful thinking and it is going to get us killed because this is a democracy.  Our national policy can only be as effective as you and I make it.  If we are too busy with our puny personal concerns, to give a rat's ass about our fellow humans, we are going to get ourselves killed - pure and simple.

If I were in a position to influence policy, I would be advocating more fulsome support of Israel’s military effort, and a full court press on our relationship with every country on earth to isolate Teheran and eventually eliminate the radical leadership, even if it requires additional American involvement in the process on the ground.  I would also be advocating for a far, far more effective effort to significantly improve the lives of all, repeat all, of the people living in the Middle East.  In my mind, it is essential that both be done, and done well, if we are to secure a more peaceful future.  The one, without the other, ensures more killing down the road a few years.  At best it is going to be one hell of a task because all of the killing going on right now will argue for more killing in the future, just as it has over the past several millennia.

The Middle East needs us, and, whether we want to or not, we must provide the leadership necessary to thwart the present drift toward nuclear annihilation of far too many people - including you and me.   There is no way that we can continue to exist independent of the rest of this shrinking, overcrowded world.  Nuclear weapons changed the rules.  I will vote for Trump, but I will also continue to criticize you and me for not demanding a more intelligent approach to life on this troubled orb.  Remember that no weapon has ever been invented that was not eventually used.  In the case of nuclear weapons it was us, you and me, that first used the damn things.  If you think for one moment that a radical religious fanatic or a shriveled up has-been of a dictator wannabe won't use the damn things, you are stupid beyond belief.